The $170 Mistake

It was a setlist that started with Proudest Monkey and ended with All Along The Watchtower, a pretty good encore that I haven’t heard in awhile.

Unfortunately I won’t hear that song or any of the others on tonight’s setlist.

Tonight Dave Matthews stepped onto the stage at Toyota Pavilion in Scranton, PA and I had two tickets for it, tickets that sit on my desk here in Arlington as I write this. A reminder of a the stresses in my life and its consequences.

Two months ago I had tickets for a DMB show in Bristow, but I had to sell the tickets and instead go to my sister’s engagement party. I still wanted to go to a DMB show this summer so I looked at the tour calendar for another date where they would be remotely close. I circled the September stop in Scranton and figured it was within driving distance and it would be a good excuse to get out of town for a couple of days.

Then life got busy.

I couldn’t find anyone else to go on this trip with me. Between work and the musical, I’ve been working 13 hours days since August which has left me little time to even think about the concert until it was too late.

Without a travel companion I thought about selling the tickets, but doing so was harder than I thought. The show didn’t sell out and a Wednesday night show in the middle of nowhere PA didn’t make my tickets a hot buy. Craigslist was already flooded with tickets and I couldn’t sell the tickets even despite offering them way below face value.

I contemplated just going by myself to the show- something I’ve done before, however I crunched some numbers:

If I didn’t go to the show I’d stand to lose the $170 I spent on the tickets. If I went to the show and not manage to sell off the other ticket, it would only be a $85 loss. However since Scranton is 4 hours away I’d have to stay the night at some motel, which would cost me an additional $60-$70. Also my car was fresh from a trip to Pittsburgh the past weekend, and has developed several noises and problems that made me nervous about taking the car on another long trip. Knowing my car is a piece of shit, I wouldn’t of wanted to take that risk. The cost of renting a car for a day would of been another $60.

So if I didn’t manage to sell the tickets I’d be out $170. If I ended up going by myself I would be out $205, plus all the time I’d have to take on Wednesday and Thursday.

Is seeing DMB worth all that time and money? I’ve been to concerts where I spent more than that. However I’m found myself drained mentally and physically to really want to go through with it.

So here I am at 3 AM, tired and angry at myself. I’m not really angry about the money- I bought the tickets so long ago that the financial loss doesn’t really register.

I’m angry at something else about this whole ordeal, but that’s the subject of another blog post.

Related posts:

1. End Of Week Thoughts.
2. DMB Week
3. Writing Break
4. This I Admit, Seems So Good, Hard To Believe
5. The Single Life: Looking For That Second Ticket